Cameron, Trudy Ann
DeShazo, J. R.
Johnson, Erica H.
2011-02-11T02:34:59Z
2011-02-11T02:34:59Z
2009-11-22
http://hdl.handle.net/1794/10970
2, 25, 19 p.
Stated preference (SP) survey methods have been used increasingly to assess willingness
to pay for a wide variety of non-market goods and services, including reductions in risks to life
and health. Poorly designed SP studies are subject to a number of well-known biases, but many
of these biases can be minimized when they are anticipated ex ante and accommodated in the
study’s design or during data analysis. We identify another source of potential bias, which we
call “scenario adjustment,” where respondents assume that the substantive alternative(s) in an SP
choice set, in their own particular case, will be different than the survey instrument
describes. We use an existing survey, developed to ascertain willingness to pay for private
health-risk reduction programs, to demonstrate a strategy to control and correct for scenario
adjustment in the estimation of willingness to pay. This strategy involves data from carefully
worded follow-up questions and ex post econometric controls for each respondent’s subjective
departures from the intended choice scenario. Our research has important implications for the
design of future SP surveys.
This
research has been supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SES-0551009) to
the University of Oregon (PI: Trudy Ann Cameron). It employs original survey data from an
earlier project supported by the US Environmental Protection Agency (R829485) and Health
Canada (Contract H5431-010041/001/SS). Additional support has been provided by the
Raymond F. Mikesell Foundation at the University of Oregon. Office of Human Subjects
Compliance approval filed as Protocol #C4-380-07F at the University of Oregon.
en_US
University of Oregon, Dept of Economics
University of Oregon Economics Department Working Papers;2010-9
Scenario adjustment
Scenario rejection
Stated preference
Value of a statistical life
Value of a statistical illness profile
VSL
Scenario Adjustment in Stated Preference Research
Working Paper

Cameron, Trudy Ann
Crawford, Graham D.
2004-12-10T22:52:47Z
2004-12-10T22:52:47Z
2003-12
http://hdl.handle.net/1794/303
28 p.
Certain sociodemographic groups often seem to be relatively more concentrated near environmental hazards than in the surrounding community. It is well-known that snapshot cross-sectional statistical analyses cannot reveal how residential mobility for these different groups reacts to changing public perceptions of environmental hazards. Decennial panel data over four census periods, for census tracts surrounding seven different urban Superfund localities, allow us to examine how ethnicities, the age distribution and family structure vary over time with distance from these major environmental disamenities. If the slope of the distance profile decreases over time, the group in question could be argued to be “coming to the nuisance.” We find a lot of statistically significant movement, including some evidence of minority move-in and increasing relative exposure of children, especially those in singleparent households. However, it appears to be hard to make generalizations, across localities, about the mobility patterns for different groups. This heterogeneity may account for the difficulty other researchers have experienced in identifying systematic effects in data that are pooled across different environmental hazards. Changes over time in the sociodemographic mix near Superfund sites may also help explain differences in the extent to which housing prices rebound after cleanup commences.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
265016 bytes
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en_US
University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics
University of Oregon Economics Department Working Papers;2003-38
Environmental justice
Neighborhood dynamics
Superfund
Environmental taint
Children's environmental health
Superfund Taint and Neighborhood Change: Ethnicity, Age Distributions, and Household Structure
Working Paper

DeShazo, J. R.
Cameron, Trudy Ann
Saenz, Manrique, 1971-
2003-08-18T21:56:32Z
2003-08-18T21:56:32Z
2001-11-05
http://hdl.handle.net/1794/109
We develop and evaluate a test of choice set misspecification for a multinomial logit choice model. This test determines whether the choice set designated by the researcher mistakenly assigns relevant substitutes to the numeraire good. We develop this test by generalizing the traditional McFadden-type conditional logit model to evaluate whether the traditional model is conditioned on an overly restrictive set of substitution possibilities. The test has a convenient feature: while it requires information on potentially relevant, but omitted, substitute goods, it does not require the researcher to observe consumers? choices among these omitted potential substitutes if they select the numeraire good (which contains these omitted substitutes). A comparison of the traditional multinomial logit choice model and our more general model suggests that choice set misspecification may produce biased parameters that distort welfare estimates to a consequential extent.
602112 bytes
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en_US
University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics
University of Oregon Economics Department Working Papers;2003-7
Mathematical and quantitative methods
Survey methods
Industrial organization
Agricultural and natural resource economics
Test of Choice Set Misspecification for Discrete Models of Consumer Choice
Working Paper

Cameron, Trudy Ann
2003-08-20T16:06:53Z
2003-08-20T16:06:53Z
2001-07-14
http://hdl.handle.net/1794/110
Willingness to support public programs for risk management often depends on individual subjective risk perceptions in the face of uncertain science. As part of a larger study concerning climate change, we explore individual updated subjective risks as a function of individual priors, the nature of external information, and individual attributes. We examine several rival hypotheses about how subjective risks change in the face of new information (Bayesian updating, alarmist learning, and ambiguity aversion). The source and nature of external information, as well as its collective ambiguity, can have varying effects across the population, in terms of both expectations and uncertainty.
425984 bytes
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en_US
University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics
University of Oregon Economics Department Working Papers;2003-8
Risk elicitation
Subjective probability
Prior/Posterior distributions
Ambiguity aversion
Bayesian updating
Alarmist learning
Microeconomics
Economic history
Updating Subjective Risks in the Presence of Conflicting Information: An Application to Climate Change
Working Paper